A whale came out of nowhere, breached the water, and landed on a small, 19-foot boat on Sunday morning off the coast of Plymouth, Massachusetts, according to video footage that captured the "insane" moment.
The incident happened at around 10 a.m. on Sunday off the coast of White Horse Beach and luckily there were no injuries, Plymouth Harbormaster Chad Hunter told NBC10 Boston.
The video shows the whale come out of the water and smash down on top of the boat, causing it to briefly submerge, before the whale went back into the water and the boat continued to float.
"All of a sudden, full breach, ten feet out of the water, slams on top of his guy's boat, like his bow goes down, basically, into the water, engine out, full thing pops off, whale rolls over the side of it, totally fine, but his boat was messed up," Ryder Parkhurst, a witness, told NBC10 Boston.
"It was insane, the guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. Pops up, bang...right on the bow of the guy's boat."
Hunter went on to mention how rare it is for a whale to breach the water and hit a boat, and added that it was very lucky nobody was injured.
"The boat was in the right place at the wrong time. This could have been much worse for all involved," Hunter said. "Children like to lean over the side of the boat to watch the fish so it is very lucky that nobody got hurt here. An incident like this is pretty rare but very dangerous to boaters."
Laura Howes, director of Marine Education and Conservation at Boston Harbor City Cruises, told ABC News what boaters should do when in an area where whales could be.
"The most important thing a boater can do is keep a distance. You want to stay at least 100 feet away," Howes said.
She added that the whale was "lunge feeding," which is when a whale moves fast to consume a large amount of prey at the surface.
"[Boaters] can easily move away from that direction, but a whale doesn't always quite know what's going on at the surface," Howes said.
Hunter said there were plenty of boats out in the water on Sunday "for recreational fishing due to an abundance of bait fish." The harbormaster crews had even been monitoring the waters after a whale bumped into a boat on Friday.
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